[crdf]

It is weird that people misunderstood bullying. It is not what was done, but how it was perceived. Something that for me and a lot of other people would be normal, for another would feel abusive.

The problem is that readers misinterpret her blog. Yes it is bias and full of emotion as it is expected for someone who had their feelings hurt.

BUT if you go and read her blog entry she clearly states she was not told she should be raped. Such thing would have immediately been flagged by the community and taken down by GR staff.

Rather it was her book that was placed in a shelf with a name that was offensive to her [I doubt it was the only book on that shelf!]

What I know is that GR is against censure but PERSONAL ATTACKS against members and authors are NOT allowed and taken care of immediately.

The shelf system is use just like the ratings. It is for personal use not for the author's benefit and trying to interpret a meaning would be wrong.
As someone else said, some people rate a book with 1 star contrary to the suggestion of the system, and 1 is equal A. Some would vote with 1 for do not read, 2 maybe and so on.
A lot of people use he shelves in a similar manner - putting books on a shelf called illiterate or author should be *** would remind me that I have researched those books and I do not want to do that again. Some users read hundreds of books per year and add thousands more. It is impossible to remember what you've seen, so you need our own system to mark not only books you've rated but books you don't want to read because of various reasons.

A lot of people dislike the fact that someone can rate and review a book before it is released. This has been discussed multiple times and GR will not change it, to the authors dislike.



Also talking about bullying, there has no less coming from authors. They contact users, offend and do the same as a user can do. Often they will edit their books, delete data, ISBN numbers and ruin the peoples catalogs So bullying is not exclusive to readers or authors and it can happen anywhere, even on mobileread. It is the proportion to which we will take the event. She creates publicity for both her and GR.


Although I am member of GR community this is not in defense of blame of anyone. I read the forums a lot and I don't remember seeing this, all I'm saying is people get heated, people say things. But unlike other places, profanity is allowed on GR and they, as a commercial website, would most probably not ban anyone that is using a bad word [unless misusing it, attacking people, being a troll, abusive, spamming and etc.]

Not to mention that for many users the content of the site itself is often considered offensive, meaning profile pictures, book covers [seriously], book content [seriously again], reviews and etc. So if they start censuring people they would have to censure books as well. Somehow seems impossible, to me.



Sorry for the long post. I actually heard of this for the first time yesterday and I cannot believe the publicity it is given. If you want drama just go and brows the feedback group. There are some pretty interesting topics, very heated.